


A One Room Hell

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Community: sherlockkink, Hallucinations, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:15:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is watching him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A One Room Hell

**Author's Note:**

> for this kink meme prompt: _I want Holmes having drug induced hallucinations. And I don't mean he thinks he's a cat or something. I mean seriously scary, disturbing, paranoid hallucinations that have him hyperventilating, sweating, freaking out, trying to tear his own skin off and generally lose it. Cue Watson to the rescue! Trying to calm Holmes down and keep him from hurting himself._

Someone is watching him.

Holmes is a loose limbed sprawl in his chair, and there is liquid euphoria tainting his blood. He thinks for a moment that Watson has returned early, and he will be furious, but there is no sigh of disapproval, no uneven footsteps. There is no sound at all, not even the clatter of carriages or deep breathing of the city, but instead a buzzing silence that lies heavy and thick. He can feel eyes on the back of his head, and the sensation is crawling under his skin, itching, like a tide of biting ants between skin and muscle. It drives him from his stupor, and there is no one behind him, no one at the door, and no matter which way he turns there are always eyes behind him, burning into him, and he has searched every corner without finding a body to connect them to. He catches a movement in the glass of a framed picture, and he when he would look closer, would examine it, he finds his eyes sliding away. It is rising over him, this sudden terror, and he closes his eyes in desperation. Still, _still_, he is being watched, and he is biting his tongue to keep from screaming at them to face him, damn it, tasting blood. There is someone behind him, their hand heavy on his shoulder, and his eyes fly open as he whirls, arm coming up to strike, to strike, to strike at nothing. Nothing, and they are behind him again, and they could not possibly move so fast, and no matter where he turns they are still there, and his breath is coming too fast and short; he can hear the scream of his breath trying to fill empty lungs, and he flings himself towards a corner of the room, frantic to put something behind him, something solid and real and tangible. He forces himself into the junction of walls, and the weight of them swallows his tormentors, pulls him back down from limbo, and his mind's mad spinning is slowing. He closes his eyes, and there is no one watching him, no one, no one there. The horrid gaze eases, eases, fades, and his breath trembles out in something suspiciously close to a sob as it disappears altogether.

He is shaking with reaction, and he needs something to calm his nerves before Watson comes back, something to steady him, something to drown out the rising tide of sound all around him, the city and its inhabitants tuning themselves minor screams against each other. His violin is there, there, settled on the table, and it is only three steps, one two three and he will be able to touch it, but he cannot move. His hands are aching, plaster dust beneath each nail, his fingers cramping, and the tactile sensation reassures him, sends him stumbling those three steps to comfort. His hands know what to do; they stroke over the wood surface, and he breathes out relief, lifting the instrument to his shoulder. He will sooth himself with the slide of strings, with a Mozart, with a Mendelssohn, and he is poised to tease out the first note when it turns on him, the pegs become snakes, shredding his fingers, flaying them to white, white bones, and he is holding an instrument made from death and hysteria and blood, the strings a finely crafted dying breath, and it is sending poison crawling up his neck, and his skin is boiling and charring off bones that scream in the pitch of hell. He screams himself, flinging the damned instrument away from him, and laughs when the wood shatters against the stone of the fireplace, but the violin is screaming back, telling him all the ways could die, and he scuttles back in terror; he must get away, where they cannot find him, and the watchers are back, joined by laughter and unintelligible whispers, and his knees buckle when he hits the wall. There is a knife in his hand, and he does not know where it came from, but he thinks it is all that is keeping them at bay, these devils and demons and wrathful angels. There is one before him now, a dark indistinct shape, and he strikes out, feels the blade connect, and then the shape shifts, morphs, and it is Watson, with blood across his face and expression of disbelief in his eyes. The knife drops from panicked fingers, and he has to tell Watson to leave, escape before they take him as well, and then Watson's face shifts again; it is a grinning skull bathed in blood, a skull made of metal and gears and clockwork, and Holmes screams and screams and cannot stop himself.

*

Watson's face is stinging, the blood dripping from the slice Holmes opened on his cheek; he is talking to Holmes, trying to get him to listen, telling him anything he can think of that might catch his attention. Holmes is pressed into the corner, legs and arms tensed and trembling as they attempt to push him further into the walls, and his eyes are wild, glazed and wide, his pupils flicking uncontrollably. He has his mouth open, and whatever he might have said is lost as his expression shifts into one of terror and he screams instead, a long, tortured noise like one he might torture from his violin. It is a sound Watson had never thought to hear come from Holmes, and it goes on and on; surely he must draw breath sometime. Holmes falls silent, his breath rasping against the sudden quiet, and then he is muttering and sobbing to himself in a mix of French and English, incomprehensible nonsense. He unfurls and flings himself forward, and Watson is caught off guard, unable to halt him until after he has already thrust his hands into the fire. Watson gives a cry of his own then, and yanks Holmes back; he struggles, still straining towards the fire, and now Watson is quick to pin him down, to capture him between his own body and the floor, holding Holmes' shaking limbs as he twists and writhes in his grasp. Watson is grimly determined in his immobilization, and it is long, long time before Holmes goes limp; Watson does not know if it is that his words have finally reached him, or that the drug has exited his system, or if he is simply exhausted. Holmes pants, and utters the first word he has managed since Watson returned, and it is a harsh exhalation from a ravaged throat. "Watson," his eyes finally focusing on the here and now, and Watson breathes out his fear and lays his head against Holmes' shoulder. Beneath him, Holmes closes his eyes and shudders once; his hands twist in Watson's hold to grasp at his hands, tangling their fingers together, and Watson knows now that there Holmes will have a mind left when he wakes in the morning.


End file.
